


The Bone Orchard

by gloriouswhisperstyphoon



Series: a truth that no one wants to hear [3]
Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: American Gods Fusion, F/M, Rebelcaptain if you squint, the dead man gets better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-13 07:04:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15358920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloriouswhisperstyphoon/pseuds/gloriouswhisperstyphoon
Summary: There are questions that may be answered and there are things that may be learned, when you stand on the precipice of death, but none of these things may be unlearned.Or: Cassian stands vigil for a dead god and meets one who gave him a gift once.





	The Bone Orchard

**Author's Note:**

> Posted for Day One of Cassian Week, the prompt of which was Dream.

 

In his dreams, Cassian could see the bombs falling again. The bright magnesium flares of the guns flashed again and he could feel the ricochet of bullets around him.

The fields burned again in his dreams, the shrieks of animals and people trapped in the fire echoing again - the sickly sweet smoke of diesel fuel _burning_ \- and then it shifted -

And he was back in the Masonic Temple, watching Draven where he sat tied to his chair, the agents surrounding him again.

His gaze fixed on Draven - no, he was Odin, but he wasn’t - he was Wednesday and he was Draven and then his glass eye shattered, filling with blood all over again.

His voice echoed through the dream and his mouth filled with the sickly sweet smoke of the mead he had drunk with Draven the night he had made his deal.

_You work for me. You protect me. You help me. You transport me from place to place. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil._

In his mind, he saw the vigil, the ground falling away and the noose tightening around his neck and the spear opening up his side and then -

He started awake, Saw and Lando staring at him from the front seat of the van they had commandeered.

“Are you alright there boy?” Lando asked. “Your dreams were loud enough to wake every god from here to the Mississippi.”

His mouth was dry and he groped for the water bottle he spied in a cup holder.

“Tell me about the vigil,” Cassian said.

_Draven’s voice echoed in his mind, “And should I die, you will stand vigil for me.”_

Saw turned around from where he sat in the front seat, his eyelid drooping even further down with distaste. “That is a terrible idea. Bad, bad, bad. It will kill you.”

Mr Nancy - no, he wanted to be called Lando, called out over his shoulder as he drove. “You don’t have to do it, Cassian. We can get someone else to stand vigil instead - one of our kind.”

Cassian shook his head. “Draven wanted _me_ to stand vigil for him. It can’t be so bad - all I have to do is stand by the body a little.”

A burst of dark laughter from Saw.

Lando turned to Saw. “You tell him. I’m driving. Tell him how much of an idiot he is.”

“I have never met a man so stupid. You do it.”

Cassian suddenly felt a deep pang of sympathy for every teacher he’d ever come across. Was this what two feuding children were actually like?

Lando said, “The person standing vigil gets tied to the tree like Draven. Just like how he did it. And then the person hangs there for nine days and nine nights. No food, no water, all alone. And at the end, they’ll cut the person down - and, maybe he lives. That’s the vigil.”

“I’ll do it,” Cassian said, steeling himself.

“No,” Lando said.

“You’re insane,” Saw said.

Lando shook his head. “Why would you do it?”

Cassian felt himself shrug. “I’ve cheated death this long, if I die today, if I die after this war, it doesn’t concern me. But I made a deal with Draven.”

Saw shrugged. “It’s your death.”

From the back of the bus, a sour, honey-like smell rose from the body.

 

\--

 

They drove onwards in silence, the landscape passing by outside the window, the houses growing more and more apart until the car finally stopped in the middle of nowhere in Virginia.

The Worlds Tree was far away from everything - they’d had to drive south from Blacksburg for almost an hour, watching as the roads grew narrower and narrower and their names became more and more whimsical.

A sign on the gate in front of the farm read “ASH TREE” and Cassian shook his head at the sheer irony of that.

The gate creaked as he pushed it open.

The earth was soft beneath his feet.

When he reached into his pocket, the Liberty dollar was as cool as the rooftop had been against his fingertips.

There were three women standing by the tree - at first, he thought the middle one was the Zorya (no, her name was Jyn), but no. He didn’t know them at all. They looked almost like Russian nesting dolls, with a tall one, a middle-sized one and a woman so hunched and short that he wasn’t sure if she was alright or not.

All three of them carried ladders and rope.

The smallest of the women dropped into a curtsey when Cassian came up to them and the biggest woman carried Draven’s body, as if it weighed no more than that of a child, to the foot of the tree.

“You are the one?” the tallest woman asked.

“You will mourn the All-Father?” the middle woman asked.

“You have chosen to stand vigil?” the smallest woman asked.

Cassian nodded.

Lando called out. “You know, boy, you don’t have to do this. You aren’t ready for this. We can find someone more suited.”

He shook his head. “I’ll do it.”

The other man stubbed his cigarillo out under his boot. “You know that it’s going to kill you, right?”

A wind fluttered through the leaves of the ash tree.

He gave a little shrug in reply. “If it kills me, then it’ll kill me.”

Saw walked over to Cassian, none too pleased about the turn of events. He poked a finger into Cassian’s forehead. “Come through this alive for _me_. I won the right to knock out your brains and I will do it.”

Their footsteps were silent as the two men walked back to the car.

Cassian turned back to the women.

“Take off your clothes,” they said.

“All of them?”

All three nodded in unison and he did so silently, clinically.

They pointed out the middle ladder to him and he climbed the nine steps, the rungs smooth and worn beneath his bare feet.

The middle woman tipped out the contents of her sack onto the grass. It was a tangle of ropes, all of varying lengths and the women began to knot the ropes around the tree.

The ropes went under his arms and around his body and he sagged as they took his weight, almost comfortably.

And then the last rope was tied loosely around his neck.

The women descended their ladders and took his away.

And then they left him there, hanging from the Worlds Tree, a corpse wrapped in a motel-sheet shroud five feet below his own feet.

He was all alone.

The first day that Cassian hung there, he felt nothing, discomfort edging on pain and a sense only that he was awaiting something.

Then the time started to pass.

The leaves above him rustled with the wind.

The pain in his body seemed to flash red, then gold and the world started to shimmer and spin before his eyes.

He licked his lips. He was so thirsty.

The wind rustled again.

Emeralds and sapphires and rubies started to flash before his eyes. He could feel the tattoo of his heart beating inside his chest, feel the warmth of the blood flowing through his veins and arteries, the complex web of neurons beneath his skin.

He could hear Draven’s voice in the back of his head.

_“Either you live or you don’t. That’s the only trick to it.”_

A chattering started up, near his right ear. An angry and laughing sound.

Ratatosk, ratatosk, it sounded like.

He could feel the sound of feet drumming down the trunk of the tree.

Tap, tap, tap.

The sound stopped and he turned to see the small, mischievous face of a little red squirrel.

He closed his eyes.

A voice fluttered into his mind. _You will lose many things. You will forget many things. You will give many things away. But remember this_.

A terrible vision rode past on a giant wolf.

A giant spider walked past, its legs gangly and gnarled, skittering as it went.

The moon rose and fell in the skies and a woman opened and shut the gates to let it in each day, her eyes full of stardust and pity.

Cassian shivered against the bark of the tree and his eyes fell shut.

He awoke to see lightning flickering across the sky, the sparks white hot against the dark clouds.

He opened his mouth to catch the rain as it fell, almost laughing as the rain made contact with his body - cold to cold, dust to dust, ash to ashes.

_He was alive!_

If he were to die, it would be perfect here - alive and perfect and mad all in one moment, hanging from the branches of the Worlds Tree.

He felt warm inside for the first time in a long time and almost comfortable and his eyes closed of their own accord.

In his delirium and in his dreams, Cassian could _feel_ the tree. Not against his back, where the bark had rubbed it raw, but he felt it from within.

His feet went deep into the earth, into time itself and the hidden springs. He felt the cool waters of Urd’s well, saw the giantess guard the spring and the secrets that it held.

He had a thousand arms, thousands of fingers, all reaching into the sky and its warmth and the weight of the sky was heavy on his shoulders.

The pain was unbearable, but he did not feel it. The pain was not his, it was that of the figure on the tree and he was so much more now.

He was the tree and the wind that rustled its top leaves and he was the blue skies above and he was the hawk that soared in the air above his head and he was Ratatosk, the squirrel that ran from the highest branches to the deepest roots.

The stars wheeled in the skies above and he reached his fingers out, to catch their dust between his. And he looked up and he saw a single star in the sky and the world fell quiet.

 

\---

 

The world was quiet and dark around him.

He looked down at himself - no longer naked, but wearing the same clothes that he had worn the night in Chicago when Jyn had taken the moon to light his way through the darkness.

He held the Liberty dollar between his hands and the coin seemed to glow like the moon with its soft light.

And then he knew.

He was going to meet Jyn.

She waited for him at the end of the darkness, her hair glowing gently, bathed in moonlight for all that there was no moon in the sky.

She smiled when she saw him. “Hello there, Cassian.”

He looked around him at the plum-black darkness. “I don’t know what’s happening here. I’ve been having weird dreams ever since I left the army. Am I dead? Is this it?”

Jyn threw her head back and let out a peal of laughter. “This isn’t it for you. Not yet at least. I’m just here to guide you.”

She looked down, as if embarrassed. “But there is a price.”

He shrugged. Back in Chicago, she’d called him Empty, and he’d never felt it more. “Just take it. Whatever you want.”

She pursed her lips, placing one foot forward.

She turned back and looked over her shoulder. “Not yet. Let’s walk a while.”

He ran after her, holding the Liberty dollar in his hand. “Wait! Jyn! This is yours.”

Jyn turned and shook her head. “Not yet.”

They came to a fork in the road, one leading left and one leading right.

Jyn looked at him and when she spoke, her voice spoke of millenia of loss. “All your questions will be answered if you choose a path. But which would you prefer - the path of easy lies or the path of harsh truths?"

He held out the Liberty dollar. “Is this the price?”

She shook her head. “I gave it to you to keep.”

He caught her hand and placed it there. “I don’t care if it’s the price or not, I’m giving it back.”

Jyn closed her eyes. “It bought you your freedom twice and now, it will be here, to light your way through the dark places.”

She stretched up on her tiptoes, her fingers holding the Liberty dollar aloft and then, as if in a dream, the coin seemed to float upwards into the air. But it wasn’t a coin any more. There was no more Lady Liberty with her crown of spikes, only the pockmarked and cratered surface of the moon, hanging about a metre above Cassian’s head.

Jyn spoke again. “Which way do you choose, the way of harsh truths or the way of easy lies?”

He took a deep breath. “Truths. I’ve come too far for lies.”

She looked immeasurably sad at that and hesitated before she said, “The price is your name.”

Cassian nodded and she touched a single cool finger to his forehead and he felt something tickle in the back of his mind, before she drew her hand back, a brilliant white flame at the tip of her finger.

“Was that my name?”

She closed her hand and the light was gone. “It was.”

She pointed at the right hand path. “That way.”

As he started down the path, she grabbed at his arm and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

“If it helps at all, I’ll wait on the other side for you.”

Cassian stared at the dark path, now bathed in moonlight. He looked up into the velvet-black sky and saw the little moon twinkling above the darkness.

He lifted his foot and felt the weight of it as he started walking down the path.  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm as confused as you are. 
> 
> Many thanks to the following people who dealt with me yelling about this strange fever dream: imsfire, melanoradrood, swdsnygeek


End file.
